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Weylforge

Godtech devices handling different aspects of wormhole construction

Weylforge
Image from Steve Bowers
The function of each component part of a weylforge array is a matter of informed speculation

Function

Used in the creation of wormholes, weylforges are large, complex, and energy-consuming systems, usually tended by their own internal high toposophic AIs. These massive god-tech constructions are named in honour of Hermann Weyl, who first described the concept of wormholes in 48 BT. While exact details of the structure and operation of these devices are largely beyond the understanding of lower toposophic minds, a combination of interviews with transapient entities, comments, and observations over the course of centuries has led to the current, high-level, description of the technology.

A Weylforge actually consists of an entire array of devices all handling different aspects of wormhole construction.

Power: Wormhole capture from the quantum foam and initial expansion to stable size currently requires energy equivalent to approximately 3% - 10% of the daily power output of a Sol-type G-class star (Approx. 1E30 — 3.34E30 Joules, depending on the type of wormhole and the S-level of the creating mind). This energy may be generated in a number of ways, such as:
- Collector arrays orbiting the nearest star, pulsar, or Deep Well Industrial Zone
- Conversion reactors operating either beneath a local stellar surface or in close proximity to the forge using material collected from the local Kuiper belt or Oort Cloud

The energy collected is transmitted to the weylforge in the form of high power laser or maser beams and then stored using magmatter-based capacitor systems built into the wormhole production module.

Seeds: Seeds are generally produced at specialized magmatter production facilities located some convenient distance from the weylforge itself. It is generally accepted that this is a matter of placing the production facilities closest to needed sources of matter and energy.

A tiny shell of prestressed (?) magmatter ranging from 20-30 microns in diameter, a seed is placed at the center of the weylforge before the creation of each wormhole. It is believed that the seeds primary function is to act as a target for the particle streams produced by the production module, perhaps to generate the tremendous energy densities required to extract a wormhole from the quantum foam. However it has also been suggested that at the higher S-levels the seed is used to actually create the wormhole itself, being imploded by the particle streams into a small black hole that is then somehow converted into the final gateway. Further details that would resolve this debate have yet to become available as of this writing.

Wormhole production module: Primary structural component of a weylforge. Consists of twenty 'accelerator arrays' of magcarbon nanotube re-enforced linear accelerators, placed at the vertices of an imaginary dodecahedron. Each accelerator array consists in turn of twenty linear accelerators, each less than a centimeter in diameter but anything up to 10 million kilometers in length (the precise size seems to vary with the type of wormhole being produced and the S-level of the creating entity). A combination of magnetic fields, precision mass-streams, and possibly quantum levitation effects are used to hold each accelerator array in position and stable against perturbations.

Extraction core: At the center of the production module is a dodecahedral space defined by the location of the accelerator arrays. This space is generally a meter or so across (a vast space on the scale of a newly created wormhole) and contains the device that has come to be known as the extraction core. The core is itself made up of several layers of devices:

- Frame buffers: Frame buffers consist of multiple nested rings of magmatter, each spinning at several thousand kilometers per second while simultaneously slowly rotating around the central core of the weylforge. While both the purpose and name of these devices is unclear, it has been theorized that frame buffers are somehow involved in manipulating the local space-time, within the weylforge (possibly via the mechanism of "frame-dragging" normally only encountered around neutron stars and black holes), perhaps for the purpose of cancelling out tidal forces, or even "shaping" space into a form optimized for wormhole production.

- Prism: Positioned at the center of the frame buffer array is a strangely shaped object generally referred to as the prism. If anything the purpose and function of the prism is even less well understood than that of the frame buffers. However, repeated observations and several transapient interviews on this point have led to the generally accepted theory that a prism acts to somehow assist in the final aiming or synchronization of the incoming particle streams from the production module. It has been suggested (although by no means proven) that perhaps the prism uses some sort of quantum mechanical effect to "even out" the arrival times of all of the particle streams so that they all strike the seed at the center of the forge at exactly the same moment. What role (if any) the singular shape of a prism plays in its function remains unclear.

- Extraction kernel: The extraction kernel is the innermost part of the extraction core and is presumed to play a primary role in the actual creation and stabilization of a new wormhole. While the method of operation and fine-scale structure of the extraction kernel (several sources have indicated that the device makes use of magmatter based pico-scale technology in some fashion) remain beyond the comprehension of modosophont level minds, its overall appearance has been described on several occasions by those sophonts lucky enough to be present at the construction of a new weylforge or the set up phase of the famous entity Planom Synerg: "Nested shells of cobwebs, each spinning on a different axis and glowing with strange lights and distorted reflections."

Wormhole Production

(the following is a theoretical simulation of what is believed to occur at the moment of wormhole production)
To produce a wormhole, a weylforge first accumulates energy in its capacitors while carefully aligning a seed and each element in the production module to ensure that all of the particle beams produced by the accelerator arrays will strike at precisely the right time and angle. When everything is in readiness, the capacitor banks discharge in sequence, simultaneously accelerating packets of protons along the length of each accelerator until they are moving at just under the speed of light. The particle beams exit the ends of each accelerator, pass through the gaps in the first and third layer of the extraction core (the mechanism for passage through the prism remains unclear), and strike the seed target with energies approaching that of the Big Bang itself. So extreme are the conditions produced that the quantum foam itself is affected and, if everything is functioning as it should, a wormhole is briefly captured and held stable for many times longer than it would normally persist.
At this exact moment, the extraction kernel activates and induces a state of extreme vacuum fluctuation in the fabric of the space-time at the center of the forge.

These vacuum fluctuations are somehow fed into the temporarily stable wormhole and act to expand it to a size (a nanometer or so across) where natural vacuum fluctuations are sufficient to do most of the work of holding the wormhole throat open. The extraction kernel then performs what has been described as a complex "folding" procedure, resulting in the formation of a "standing wave" of vacuum fluctuation at each wormhole mouth, the so-called Caustic. While only meta-stable and requiring constant maintenance, especially while the wormhole is still only microscopic, the Caustic is sufficient to convert the wormhole into a usable (although at this point non-traversable) gateway and, when expanded up to full size, will become effectively self-maintaining and sufficiently stable to allow transit of interstellar traffic with only occasional adjustments.

Packaging and Transit

After it has been created, it is necessary to transport the mouths of the wormhole to their intended locations. To accomplish this, containment/stabilization frames are transported along the spaces between the accelerator arrays and placed on either side of the extraction core, which is powered down. Each wormhole mouth is removed from the extraction kernel and placed within a containment/stabilization frame. From there, each frame is slowly transported away from the weylforge, sometimes taking weeks or months to make the journey into open space where it is placed within a larger and more powerful frame sufficient to withstand the rigors of interstellar transport. Finally, each transport class containment frame is loaded aboard a waiting linelayer and the wormhole mouths begin their journey across space to their final destinations.

Additional Notes

Initial Wormhole Conditions: When fully expanded and converted to a fully traversable structure, a wormhole requires a large volume of asymptotically flat space around it in order to remain stable. However, when first created wormhole gates are configured to be stable within a much smaller volume of flat space, usually measured in centimeters. These compacted gates are also untraversable by any form of organized matter or energy due to immense internal tidal forces and concentrated vacuum fluctuations. When a wormhole mouth arrives at its destination, it is both expanded and reconfigured to allow safe transit.

Transport vs. Comm-gauge wormholes: The preceding description of wormhole manufacture was for a transport class wormhole. Comm-gauge or Hayward class wormhole represent a much more sophisticated example of metric engineering and differ in a number of ways in the details of their manufacture. Perhaps the most significant difference is the level of sophistication of a Hayward weylforge, seen most notably in the apparent use of artificial black holes and phantom energy fields to create, expand, and stabilize the gateway. Such technologies seem to involve metric engineering at a level far beyond that seen in more 'conventional' wormhole manufacture and usually result in weylforge designs that are only a fraction of the size of a transport class unit. Typical Hayward class weylforges measure their dimensions in thousands of kilometers rather than in light-seconds and may mass as much as a small planet.

Finally, at the most sophisticated level of wormhole technology, the use of so-called void-class linelayers, that is linelayers based on godtech void-ship technology, has been occasionally observed. Given the massive energy and mass densities presumed to be involved in void bubble manufacture, the exact methodology by which a wormhole (or indeed anything else not created at the same time as the void bubble) may be enclosed in such a device remains unclear.

 
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Appears in Topics
InfrastructureInterstellar TransportMetric Engineering
Space-Time EngineeringTransapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
 
Development Notes
Text by Todd Drashner
Initially published on 04 January 2002.

 
Additional Information
Named after Herman Weyl, theoretical physicist and philosopher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl
 
 
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